The Virginia Cut

 The Virginia Cut

Monday Oct 9th 2023

Our goal at this point is to follow the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW) south from Norfolk (Mile Zero) through Virginia and North Carolina down to Morehead City. We envisage that this journey will take 5-6 days. It will mostly be motoring due to the constrained navigation (narrow, windy and shallow) but should allow some sailing and be pretty relaxing. As well as being picturesque and interesting, it allows us to avoid sailing around Cape Hatteras, which can be really gnarly. There is a route down through the DIsmal Swamp, which we took in 2012, but it's even more shallow and full of tree debris. In 2020 we took the Virginia Cut route, which has more locks and bridges to navigate, but is otherwise less taxing, and that's what we are going to do this time as well. 

 We were up early and had the anchor on deck by 7.30 am. As we left the anchorage we immediately encountered an enormous cargo ship accompanied by two tugs that was heading south down the Elizabeth River, in the same direction we were going. We probably could have gone out in front of it, but this didn’t seem like the smartest move, so we coasted along behind them for the next half hour. They eventually turned off into a loading dock and we continued along the industrial section of the Virginia Cut. We passed under a couple of bridges and soon arrived at the Great Bridge Lock, in perfect time for the once per hour transit. The next four mile section to the Centerville Turnpike swing bridge was too far for us to make in 30 minutes, so we ended up waiting twenty minutes for the next opening. The North Landing swing bridge, at mile 20 on the Intra Coastal Waterway, was the last of obstacles we needed to navigate today and the following 30 miles took us down through some attractive areas of swampy woodlands and open expanses of shallow water. We arrived at Coinjock Marina, mile 50 on the ICW shortly after 4pm. We filled up with diesel, fresh water, pumped out our septic tank and then took a shower on land. Life felt really good as we downed a couple of cold beers and ate Thai green curry for dinner. 

Mike

36.348 N, -75.949 W

Sunrise from our anchorage off Hospital Point, Norfolk / Portsmouth, VA

Trying to avoid a huge cargo ship with two tugs as we head south from Norfolk (Photo courtesy Rod Breault)

A dredging barge plus two tugs enters the Great Bridge Lock just after we exited. We are heading south, they were heading north

A Catamaran "Mavis" that we followed, the overtook ... working south through the swampy forests